Chapter 4
four
Kirill pales.
I relish the look of fear on his face as it slowly dawns on him that he won’t be walking away unscathed. Not this time. At my side, my hands clench and unclench rhythmically. It’s hard not to sink my fist into his pug little face.
“Your grandfather murdered your mother while she was pregnant,” Andrei insists. He is blind to the truth. The love he has for his brother is strong, but I can sense his doubt. See it lurking behind his steel cut eyes. “He had proof.”
“He lied.” Striding into the room, hands in my pocket, I keep my gaze on the man who raised me. The man who abandoned me without a second thought. He tore my family apart. Murdered my mother and left me to the wolves.
“Khristos,” Andrei murmurs under his breath.
Lips slightly parted. Eyes wide. He stares at me as if he is seeing a ghost. The ghost of my mother.
There is very little of Andrei Tkachenko in me besides the color of my eyes and the mark I bear on my wrist. Otherwise, I am a spitting image of the woman who bore me.
“Impossible,” Kirill stares at me in abject horror, his face paling even further. “You’re dead.”
My gray eyes dart to his. “You should have realized by now how hard that really is,” I remind him. “After all, you are the one who sent assassin after assassin to kill me since I was a child. Otets.”
Andrei’s gaze sweeps to his brother. “You said he was dead.”
“He..he was,” Kirill stammers. “Father killed them both. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The lies of a snake are the sweetest,” I sneer at Kirill. “Aren’t they?”
“He killed Antony, Andrei,” Kirill spits, straightening himself up. He will not go down lightly. Not without trying to take me with him. “I have proof of that.”
Lifting my chin, I eye my birth father. “He is right,” I admit honestly.
“I was thirteen, living in the shadow of the Bolsheokhtinsky bridge, when Antony attacked me in the dead of night. I defended myself. It wasn’t until his last breath that I realized who he was.
When he asked me to forgive him and called me brother. ”
Andrei’s darkened gaze turns to his brother. “You told me Antony was killed by the Fedorov’s.” Kirill audibly swallows, the fat of his neck tightening, his pulse thumping, pupils pinpoint as his fight-or-flight instinct takes over. He is sweating, eyes wild as he takes all three of us in.
“Why don’t you tell him what really happened, Kirill.
” The utter disdain I have for this man rolls off me in waves.
This is his last stand. He won’t escape this room.
Not alive. “Tell him how you are the one who stole our mother.
Forced her to be your whore after you got her addicted to drugs.
And then, when Andrei called you up to take part in his regime, you overdosed her with those very drugs. Kicked me out on the streets.
“Tell the brother who trusted you how you sent Antony to kill me. Whispering in his ear that I was the bad guy. That he needed to prove himself by killing me. How you set Ivan up so that his own father would lose faith in him. Why don’t you tell him the truth for once?
That all you wanted was the power the Tkachenko name gave you so you could move your human cargo without worry.
That you are nothing more than an ugly, fat traitor to your blood.
You are nothing more than dirt beneath his shoes. A coward. A loser. A…”
“Enough!” Kirill roars, standing, silver-crossed cane gripped tightly in one hand.
His knuckles turn white, his face the color of dark beet juice.
This is the man I knew growing up. The one who easily lost control and when he lost control, he made mistakes.
Just like he is now. “You know nothing, boy,” he spits.
“Nothing about being the outcast. The bastard child. I worked just as hard as Andrei and was given nothing for it. Nothing. While Andrei got everything. So, I made my little side business and built my army.”
“I treated you like a true brother,” Andrei shakes his head disappointed. “Never once did I treat you as anything less than pure blood.”
Kirill sneers. “Please,” he rolls his eyes.
“Father was right. You are weak. Allowing yourself to draw lines and enforce values. You were so drowned by your grief after the loss of that whore and her child. You made our father look weak when you married her. She was nothing. Her children are nothing.”
“I should have seen this sooner,” Andrei sighs deeply.
There is a flash of anger behind his stormy eyes, but he is the picture of calm as his brother rips him apart with his words.
“His influence over you was greater than I imagined. I thought…” He shakes his head lightly, never taking his eyes off Kirill.
You never give the enemy a chance to catch you unaware and Kirill is now his enemy.
“I was a fool to believe you were a better man than him.”
Kirill scoffs. “You only saw what I wanted you to see,” he jabs, his dark smile triumphant.
“And now,” He lifts the gold embossed lighter from his desk and flicks the spark wheel.
The flint ignites and I surge forward, ready to sacrifice myself for the father I never had a chance to know.
We tumble to the floor, my body shielding his.
Nothing comes.
No pain.
No blood.
Chest heaving, I draw up, eyes scanning and alert.
Kirill growls and ignites the lighter again and again, but nothing happens.
“Fucking…” Glass shatters, raining down around me. I sweep my arm up to protect my face, the rest of my body still shielding the man beneath me.
“Boss? Are you okay?” Dima’s voice is panicked in my ear. “Boss?”
Growling, I stand, offering Andrei my hand. He takes it and I help him to his feet.
“We’re good, Dima,” I tell him. “Looks like we’ve got a guardian angel out there.”
“Well,” a soft voice filters in from the doorway. I turn to see Kenzi leaning lazily against the frame, her brown hair in a tight bun, clad in black from head to toe. “I wouldn’t say I’m an angel.” She shrugs. “But I definitely feel guardian-like right now.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Ivan spits as he draws his gun. Kenzi eyes it warily, a perfectly stenciled eyebrow raised at the man.
“Really?” She scoffs. “I’m pretty sure I just blew my cover for your ass.
” Before Ivan can utter another word, Kenzi shifts.
Her moves are swift and precise as she shoots forward, wrenching the gun from my brother’s hand, and disassembling it within a matter of seconds. “A thank you would be appreciated.”
Andrei barks a laugh from behind me.
“Leave it to Kirill to hire an assassin,” he shakes his head.
“Man can’t even get his hands dirty to kill his own brother.
” He spits at Kirill’s body. It lies slumped against the bookcases; head lolled to the side with a giant bullet hole straight between his eyebrows.
“Could have merely injured him, though. Would have been useful to interrogate him.”
Kenzi groans. “Everyone’s a fucking critic,” she mutters. “You’re fucking welcome.”
Andrei smirks. “Thank you, malen’kiy ubiytsa.”
Little assassin.
It is fitting.
“I hope that wasn’t an insult,” she winks at him. “Because it sounds sexy.”
Andrei laughs, full and deep.
“He is right, though,” I sigh. “Whoever is running the Chameleon Agency, maybe even the Dollhouse, he knew who she is.”
“She?” Kenzi tips her head to the side. “That’s disgusting. A woman trafficking and using other women? Definitely gonna need to revoke her chick card.”
Ivan snorts. “We’ll help you revoke her life card, if that helps.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“We still need to figure out who ‘she’ is.” I walk to the other side of Kirill’s desk.
“He might not have known who she is,” Ivan points out. “They never called each other by their real names.”
“True,” I say as I pull out one of the desk drawers. “But she knew about Andrei and about me. Which means she knew who he was.”
“If Kirill didn’t know who she is, he was certainly searching into it,” Andrei speaks up. “My brother wouldn’t stand for having someone being able to hold things over his head without the ability to reciprocate.”
“So somewhere he has a file with his own research on every member,” Kenzi muses. She turns to Andrei. “He’s a paranoid narcissist. Where would he hide his most valuable intel?”
Andrei cringes, casting a disgusted look at his brother’s dead body.
“Not it,” Kenzi shakes her head emphatically. “Count me out of that one.”
Ivan chuckles. “I doubt he hid it there.”
Andrei shrugs. “Never know.”
Kenzi grunts unamused. “Imma say it’s not.”
“Most likely it’s in his safe.” Andrei smiles at Kenzi and winks. “Where it could be…”
“Got it,” Kenzi sing-songs from the other side of the room. Ivan shakes his head bewildered.
“How do you move that fast?”
Kenzi shrugs. “Superpowers.” She winks.
Of course the man hides his safe behind his own self portrait.
Narcissist.
Kenzi hums while she fiddles with the dial, her eyes closed as it spins on its axis. It takes a few tries but several moments later the lock clicks into place and the door swings open.
“Voilà.” Kenzi dips a dramatic, flourishing bow, her arm swinging out in a grand gesture.
We all chuckle. “Very well done.” I praise her.
She beams up at me like a kid who just received her favorite toy on Christmas.
Fuck. I forget how little love the Ward women grew up with.
Ava has told me that there is no doubt in her mind that Kendra loved her daughters.
But it wasn’t a mother’s love. Not the love she received growing up from her own mother prior to her death.
Kendra’s love was obsession.
Obsession with perfection.
Her daughters were a chance for her to relive everything she no longer could be.
Young with pure, untainted beauty. Hope for the future.
Now one is dead and the other is slowly working her way to becoming the next Harley Quinn.
When I spoke to Vas last, he confirmed my suspicion that the twins weren’t Ward’s biological daughters. They are his brother’s, Dante.
It explains how Elias so easily gave up one daughter and Christian so callously had the other killed.
“Well,” Ivan holds up the large, unorganized file that is overflowing with handwritten notes and crumpled papers. “This might take you a while.”
“We have one thing going for us, though.” Taking the file from him, I flip through it, giving the contents a cursory glance. “The woman who calls herself Caesar is in Seattle and whoever this Sulla is, they have to have people they know in common.”
“The canes are one way we know how to identify them,” Dima speaks up. He joined us in the office after he secured the perimeter. “However, that style of cane is popular.”
“What is with these names?” Andrei asks. “Caesar? Sulla? Are they cosplaying as Romans?”
“Two points to grandpa for knowing what cosplay is,” Kenzi cackles.
Andrei shoots her a glare which just makes her crack up more.
“We think it’s their code names,” Ivan rolls his eyes. “So far they seem to be all after Roman generals. Caesar appears to be the one pulling the strings.”
“Who we know is a woman.”
Ivan nods. “Yes. We know that Kirill is Marius. We still need to identify the one who calls himself Sulla and who knows how many others there are.”
I turn to Kenzi. “The woman who trained you,” I ask. “Madam Therese, she had a cane as well. Did you ever hear her called by another name?”
Kenzi takes a deep breath and thinks about it for a moment. “Maybe. I didn’t recognize it as a name though. Agricola or something. Thought it was some kind of salad mix.”
“That’s arugula.” Dima laughs. Kenzi punches him in the arm and mutters at him to shut it. Laughing, my enforcer rubs at his arm pretending to be hurt.
“Well, they sure are a narcissistic bunch,” Andrei snorts. “Caesar, I’m assuming, is after the great Julius Caesar. Funnily enough, Sulla was a large influence on Caesar’s reign as dictator of Rome. I’d imagine whoever this Sulla is, they know one another outside of the circuit they are running.”
“We know the Dollhouse is a separate entity than the Chameleon Agency,” Dima muses. “It’s been around longer. So, the question is did Kirill start in the Chameleon Agency first and become a member of the Dollhouse or was it the other way around?”
“Does it matter?” Ivan wonders.
Andrei nods. “Your grandfather used to talk about a secret society that called themselves the Potestas Omnis. Which translates to—”
“Power Over All,” I murmur. Andrei’s lips tilt into a proud smile as his gaze sweeps to me.
“That’s a horrible name for a secret society.” Kenzi scrunches her nose. “Might as well call themselves ‘Impotus Omnis’.”
Ivan snorts a laugh while Dima cackles loudly, and fist bumps her.
Children.
But it is good to see them laughing amongst hard and uncertain times.
“As I was saying before I was unjustly interrupted.” Andrei winks at Kenzi to soften his words. “What if my brother inherited the position after proving himself? When did this Chameleon Agency pop up?”
“The FBI had been tracking them for several years. Interpol even longer,” Ivan informs us. “From what I dug up as Agent Archer, the earliest account goes back to the mid 1980’s in St. Petersburg.”
“Around the time my father banished Kirill and the war began.”
Ivan nods. “According to the Interpol database there was a significant uptick in missing and solicited women during that time. Some of the solicited women they found, usually dead with their throats cut, bore the mark of a Chameleon. That’s why they started calling it the Chameleon Agency. The name stuck.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t choose a snake,” Andrei snarls. “Better suited if you ask me.”
“Snakes can’t hide in plain sight.” I cough, clearing my throat at the thought of what a true chameleon the man was. “Chameleons are made to blend into every environment around them. A mirror effect.”
“And I let him.” Andrei leans his head back and huffs out a frustrated breath.
“Everyone did,” Ivan placates his father. Our father. It is hard to see the man before me and call him father when the man who I have always known to be him is lying dead just a few feet away. Is this how Ava felt when she discovered the truth about Elias?
“He didn’t fool you.” Andrei places his hand on his son’s shoulder and leans in until their foreheads are touching. “Forgive me my son for being so blind.”
Ivan closes his eyes and breathes. The breath is slow as he lets years of anger and resentment toward his father fade away. “I will always forgive you, papa. All that matters is that we are here now.”
“Yes, we are.” Andrei smiles and then fully embraces Ivan.
“And I will never let someone create distance between us again. I swear it to you.” Ivan nods and I can see him struggling to hold back the tears of relief and joy that cling to his eyes like droplets of water on the leaves after a rainstorm.
Everything is washed anew.
Clean.
A fresh beginning.
But who knows what will come next.